The Dream of Dolls
by Euphemius
Summary: Dean Winchester has become an angel, and is reprogrammed to destroy all he's ever known with no memory of his past. The demons are hellbent on trying to claim his service for themselves, Heaven is for once satisfied with where the fate of the earth is going, and God is still absent. And Castiel - he just wants his charge back.
1. The Dream of Gold

**Chapter title: **The Dream of Gold

**Warnings: **Please go to my profile for a full list of warnings if you need them.

**Wordcount:** 840 words for this chapter.

**Other notes: **This was written for the DeanCas exchange on Tumblr, but it got canceled, and it was just lying around, so I decided to upload it. Also, I decided to take some liberties with the original prompt, so if the person for whom I was supposed to be writing finds this, please don't get mad at me! -cowers-

This is my first Supernatural fanfic, so let me know what you think!

* * *

Prologue

_Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. _

_- Revelation 21:1_

* * *

On the edge of the world, there exists an infinite shoreline that acts as the matrix between the celestial and the concrete finites of man. In all certainty, there are many places like these in the universe, some only accessible to the truly divine — namely archangels. But this shoreline in particular acts as a return-to state for all beings holy and supernatural — and it's here that Castiel walks, down the untamed path of golden ash, leaving no trail of footsteps behind.

Angels are not solitary creatures. They are beings of one mind, one purpose, and with their every action they act in groups and in sync. When they think, their thoughts are projected in waves to every other of the God-blessed, and when they speak, their choruses are heard from one stretch of the universe to the other and by all. But Castiel has been alone in his thoughts since the dawn of time. He is different. He considers the artistic romance of humankind as he walks, enjoys the small bliss that comes from watching them from this shoreline, and thinks about how he belongs everywhere and nowhere at all.

All at once and coming from all around him he feels a slight tremor in the air and Castiel stops. The chorus of heaven perforates the silence — the chorus that he's shut out from his head for months now — and suddenly angels are crying wonderfully and mightily: _Rejoice, for a new angel has been born; blessed is he who enters the realms of angels, he has saved us all. _Castiel shuts out the frequencies (Dean calls it the Angel Radio) from his ears almost as soon as the songs begin (they remind him too much of what he's lost and what he's no longer a part of) but he cannot unhear what he's already heard — _A new angel has been born. _

A new angel hasn't been created in over two thousand years. As a matter of fact, Castiel had been the last.

He wings himself away from the shoreline and makes for Earth, his mortal figure appearing in the middle of an empty tundra immediately afterward. And then he walks, his coat billowing formidably behind him against the harsh weathered plains, and stretches his hand out, catching the way the fog rolls over the ridges of his knuckles. Before him appears another angel and Castiel is tired but his anger spurs him on and he is ready.

"Where is Dean Winchester?" he demands as he slows his pace to a stop.

"_Where is Dean Winchester. _The question all of us have been asking for forty years and then some," the angel sighs. "I don't know, Brother."

"_Please_, Leliel. You were there when it happened."

"One of many," Leliel hums. "Yet you chose me to answer your summons —"

"You are one of the few remaining who does not hate me for the choices I have made."

Leliel throws her head back to face the grey sky and openly weeps for a long, long time. There is something beautiful in a weeping angel, but terrifying, and would make any other being succumb to tears as well. But Castiel does not; he waits for her to finish with the patience of a saint, and finally she does. And she looks at him, and she smiles, and her tears dissipate to almost nothing but a trail of ashes on the ground. "Yes, Castiel. One of the very few."

"Then I will ask again. Where is Dean Winchester?"

Leliel responds, "He is gone, Brother; they have taken him. They have made him into one of _us_ and he does not remember."

Castiel had already known, but a cold fear spreads through him anyway. He'd been intrinsically connected to the human for some time now, and had felt their connection snap as soon as the angels' voices had appeared. Of _course_ he'd known.

And for the first time in a long time, he is afraid.

"Gone," Castiel repeats uselessly.

"Gone."

Gone because he hadn't been there; because he'd been on his search for God and they'd taken him away when his attention had been distracted for only a moment. Gone is the man who was the center of Castiel's universe for half a universe and had changed the essence of where he belonged and who he was, and Castiel is at fault, like he always is, because he is the angel that disrupted the perfect path of God, and perhaps this is his true punishment after all.

Leliel affirms it. "He's an angel now, Brother. You cannot save him anymore. Dean Winchester is an angel now."


	2. The Dream of End

**Chapter title: **The Dream of End

**Warnings: **Please go to my profile for a full list of warnings if you need them.

**Wordcount:**

**Spoilers: **Up to Season 5.

**Other notes: **

Madi Holmes: What I meant by that was the angel talking about how _Cas_ couldn't save him - in Cas' eyes, he still sees Dean as needing saving. Leliel's just stating that Dean's unable to be saved anymore than he can by Cas. Besides, she's on Cas' side, and doesn't see Dean becoming an angel as entirely a good thing. Sorry for the confusion!

AND -

TITANQUEEN13. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD! IT _WAS YOU! _I ACTUALLY DELETED THE E-MAIL I GOT AFTER I HEARD THE EXCHANGE WAS CANCELED, SO I LOST YOUR NAME!? HOW DID YOU EVEN FIND THIS, HOW DID YOU - OMG!

Wow, now I feel silly because I didn't revise the last chapter sixty-three times before posting it. Forgive me OTL Now you're obligated to love this story because my happiness is dependent on your attention OTL OTL

On another note, in theology, angels can sin even though they don't have any free will. Or so I've read. And that's excluding Lucifer, by the by. You'll see where I'm going with this in just a second.

* * *

Part One

_And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. _

_- Revelation 20:1_

* * *

Chapter One

Angels are not created whole.

They are created, in a manner of speaking, defective. A newly-born is no more angel than a mortal — and thus, in the host of heaven's eyes, no more angel than a writhing mass of flesh and sin — and has precious little amount of grace. The grace they do have can be extinguished like a small flame at the slightest stir of movement. They are not created entirely pure, or entirely holy, or entirely full of God's righteousness; rather, they thrive and grow through the grace of another angel, often unknown to the infant angel themselves as to who it was so as to prevent 'father or mother figures' from appearing in the true Father's realm. Until the infant angel has reached its maturity, no other being in the universe can cause it harm.

This was a purposeful decision made long ago by the Almighty One, and since then, each angel has been released into the universe alone and with humility until they become fully fledged after being sustained and fed by their host. The only angels to have forgone this growth was The First Angel, Lucifer, and some other ones created shortly after him, and they were all born perfect. In that regard, every angel is a descendant of Lucifer. And then when he fell and his followers did too it was decided that no angel could be born untainted from then on because otherwise they may learn arrogance.

Castiel has never had another fledgling leech grace out of him because he'd been the very last to be born; heaven has not been in need of more in the past few millenia until the apocalypse arrived and several angels had died. And Castiel had been prepared to have a new angel drain him temporarily of his strength, but then God had disappeared, and no angels have been made since.

Until now.

* * *

"Can you feel that?"

Castiel looks to where the man beside him is pointing — a cemented area a few feet away from them, where the dust is unsettling and rising off the ground. The earth is shaking.

Castiel can, of course, feel it. He knows the exact cause of it, too; it's no earthquake, but rather the aftereffects of a newly-made divine being manifesting itself. When angels are born, the whole choir sings in heaven, and earth and hell and purgatory and the sixteen other levels of dimension shake together. The last birth had been long before the creation of man, so the only mortals to have witnessed the coming were the trees and the slow-moving beings of great power and neither had been much perturbed by the disturbance.

Humans, though, manage to notice everything and yet nothing at all. "Do you think we should get out of here?" the man asks Castiel worriedly. "My young daughters are at home, eight blocks away — I could run and get them, at least take them outside of the building —"

"No need," Castiel replies shortly. "The trembling will stop shortly." Sure enough, after a breath-holding moment, the earth calms in its tremors and the choirs die down. It's been a long time since the angels have come together to sing like that, Castiel reckons, especially since the conductor had left the stage long ago. Their singing, like always, was beautiful.

"What was it?"

Castiel looks up. Above the clouds, unbeknownst to the naked eye, a rolling cloud of ash settles over the aethers. Above it the angels' gleeful cries turns sinister; Castiel alone knows what they mean to do. With Dean as the only angel with some fragment of free will, it will be infinitely easier for the host to bend him over to their will and make him nod his head yes to Michael. And Dean will destroy everything else in his path before that day comes, unquestionably, without a single flicker of hesitation, for he will not remember his loved ones well enough to hesitate. An angel is made to indubitably obey, and an angel with free will is made to indubitably have just enough consent for his acquiescence to Michael to count.

This must be their final, ultimate card. They must have been planning to do this all along.

"Sir?"

Castiel looks back to the man, pulling himself out of his thoughts. He smiles in the most reassuring way he can, and blesses the man and his three daughters and wife quietly, and responds, "It's the end."

* * *

Castiel searches for Dean. He wings himself away instantaneously from location to location all over the world, searching for the man he was assigned to protect; he goes to Sydney, Australia, and to the outskirts of the frigid poles, and to Greenland, where there is a range of sierras that run lankly and glistering down the horizon and are half-concealed by the Eastern Atlantic mist. And he goes to the divine wastelands of unheard places and to aggregations of battered rock formations that may very well be older than he and descends treacherous slopes, flying and straining his wings until they feel like they are about to break. He searches every inch of the earth and does not close his eyes to rest, and when he is finished, weeks have passed.

But he finds him.

Dean is still a mewling infant on the ground, an obvious angel reborn tucked between two low-hanging tree branches, sleeping as though he hasn't yet realized that he's been an angel-hybrid for days and days now. For him to have remained here for so long meant that the angels had no immediate plan to pick him up and raise him themselves; they'd probably guessed that Castiel would look for him and not have the heart to abandon him. After all, Castiel was the last angel to have been born, which means — surely — that he's Dean's grace-host. Even if Castiel wanted to, he could not harm Dean; grace-hosts are bound to their charges in ways the charge itself will never know, and no being can hurt a newly-made angel.

Angels grow fast; in mere months, Dean will be fully formed, and he will stay in that adult form until the end of his days because angels grow fast but they do not grow old.

In mere months he will bring about the end of days. This Castiel knows; this he has felt.

He takes off his trench coat and uses it to wrap around Dean. He picks the infant up carefully, who squirms in his hold, and brings him close to his chest and adjusts his coat so that it does not dangle as much. When he hears Dean's tiny heartbeat flutter in tune with his own, Castiel wonders if it's a direct cause of him becoming Dean's grace-host, or a mere coincidence; he listens for a while longer and decides it must be the former.

Once again, any semblance Castiel has had of free will has been taken from him.

* * *

When Castiel checks his cell phone a few hours later, after having ensured that Dean was healthy and asleep and after having found a small shelter in between two thick shrubs in a nearby forest where he now crouched with the infant, he sees twenty-three new messages waiting for him.

The only people in the entire world who have his number are Dean and Sam and Bobby, and since Dean was incapacitated at the time of the calls, all the messages must have been left by either Sam or Bobby. And Bobby never calls him. A sharp twist of fear coils up in Castiel's stomach as he wonders worriedly if something had happened to Sam while he was preoccupied and curses himself for not having been more careful. He'd been so concentrated on finding Dean that the hours and days had just slipped by him without notice.

Castiel listens to all the messages, one by one.

"Hey, Cas? Listen, uh…something came up. You gotta get over here as soon as possible, man. We might be dealing with something pretty big here. Bye."

"Cas, we need you here ASAP! Something's wrong with Dean — you know Dean? Sorry, man, I know you're busy and all. Just — just give us a heads up next time you go disappearing on your search for God, or something. You know? Never mind."

"Hey Cas. I tried — I prayed, and you didn't answer. Are you alright? Give me a call or something. We have a lot to talk about. If you're hurt, you're always — you know you can always come back to us, right? We'll take care of you — well, I'll take care of you. Dean — Dean's gone."

"Cas, Dean's been missing for four days now, and there's been no sign of you both…Bobby and I are worried sick. It's just…God. God. I don't know — I — with all this apocalypse business going on, and it's like…please, give me a sign. If you're with Dean, and the two of you are hurt — just take care of him, alright? For me. For the world, too, or something. If Michael has you guys, and Dean's already said yes, then I don't know what I'll do."

And so on. The messages are longer and longer each time, to the point where Sam is telling Castiel about what he did that day or updating him on what's been going on so far on the battle front, sort of like a diary of unclosed secrets. Behind all his words Sam is telling Castiel that he is afraid, and as Castiel listens on, he grows afraid, too. Before, fear was never an emotion he could comprehend, but ever since he started losing his powers he's been more and more in touch with human emotions, and that scares him as well.

With him losing his heavenly strength and with Dean squeezing him dry of Grace, Castiel knows that he will be very weakened by the time Dean no longer needs him and can stand on his own. He wonders if Dean will be ordered immediately to kill him. And how Dean will behave as he grows up. And how his tiny shred of humanity will affect him as an angel. And when the host plans on making him say yes to Michael. And whether or not Castiel will live to see the end since he'll be practically human in a number of month's time. And if the real Dean will ever be returned to him, or if he'll remain gone forever.

* * *

Castiel waits out the night, and then waits out the rain that falls heavy the next morning, and then waits out the fog that billows over the land the next afternoon, and then waits out the supernatural that come out to stalk the next night, because he fears he may not have the strength to overcome them all.

And after he waits it all out, he moves.

He slips out of their hidden space and crosses the land swiftly with Dean. It's fairly easy to bring the infant, because Dean does not need food as much anymore, and does not cry that often, and does not wiggle in his hold.

He's as quiet as Castiel is as they move from place to place like shadows. Castiel contemplates calling Sam and telling him what happened to his brother and where the two of them will be headed, but waves away that contemplation almost immediately. He does not plan on raising Dean but rather leaving him with a human family and then watching him from afar because he loves the soul within the baby so much that he's unwilling to even try ridding himself of it even though he knows it means his demise; perhaps the demise of the world, too. He does not know what he'll do when Dean grows into the perfect weapon of heaven, does not know how angels behave if they are raised with human families or how the human family will react upon seeing their infant child become a man in less than a year

He only knows now that he must flee, and protect, and escape to a world where he can just love his old charge freely as his grace deteriorates inside him and weakens him further and binds him in terrible ways to the angel who will bring the end, even if he must do it from afar.

There is nothing else.

* * *

Sam's calls become more frequent and then begin to die away slowly. Castiel finally gives Dean away to a family he thinks will be kind to the infant, and places the baby on their doorstep. It's not unreasonable to assume that this family will be the first group of people Dean will kill when he's ready, but Castiel is willing to make that sacrifice. From afar, he plans on watching over Dean the best he can until he's of no more use; after that, he has no idea.

"So you just plan on waiting for death?"

Castiel snaps his gaze up, having been caught off guard. The archangel Gabriel sits on the roof of the house, his legs dangling over the edge, his elbows on his knees as he leans forwards, smirking. "Hey, little bro," Gabriel chirps.

"What can I do?" Castiel snaps, not pleased with someone coming to chastise him for a decision he's very much not wanted to make. "I'm sorrowful that things had to have gone this way, but there's nothing I could have done earlier to prevent this moment. I can't kill Dean, or harm him in any way, or give him to another for them to harm to Dean — it goes against my power and theirs. I'm helpless to ensure that Dean grows up safely, and once he does then I'll be a human and I'll be useless to him and fade away."

"So — let me repeat — you just plan on waiting for death? You're going to take care of the hybrid, and then drop dead, knowing full well what will come of Dean's angelhood? The whole Michael get up?"

"Why do you care? You've never taken sides before."

"Eh. I don't know, really. This whole apocalypse business is just a minor hiccup in the grand scheme of things. If there's anything I'll miss from Earth, I can always find it in heaven."

"It won't be the same, Brother," Castiel sighs. "Heaven is but a mirror reflection of everything our Father has made. There is something…different about Earth and all its inhabitants in its true state; it compels me to protect it and keep it from harm."

Gabriel hums. Castiel looks at the little bundle on the doorstep just a few feet away from him, and his heart clenches. "You could kill him when he's older," Castiel says softly, never once taking his eyes off Dean. "You alone have the strength and the will; you're one of the only angels who really doesn't want to see this apocalypse happen, even if you say it's just a blip on the radar."

"No can do. That'll send the host after my ass. I'm not suicidal like you are, Cas. I'd rather just stay low, have Michael and Lucy be pissed at each other for a little bit, and then come back when all's good, you know? I'll take that over all Earth's pleasures any day. If Dean-o here can help speed things up, then all the more power to him."

"So you agree," Castiel says. "You think Dean becoming Michael's vessel is the best possible course of action. That Dean becoming an angel is the best possible course of action."

"Well, he was being god-awfully stubborn about saying yes. Being an angel will make him more obedient and all that neat jazz, so yeah, I agree." Gabriel looks at the glum look on Castiel's face. "Hey, hey, hey! Don't be mad at me, little bro — it's not any of our faults that you're the only angel with a different opinion here." Then Castiel feels a hand push through his hair, rubbing at his head. He pushes Gabriel's hand away and the archangel grins.

Castiel doesn't know why Gabriel is there, but the older angel doesn't leave, and maybe for once Cas is glad for the company. He's been alone for so long, and he's tired. He ponders and ponders question after question as the sun slowly rises, trying to find it in him to snatch Dean away before it's too late, but can't find any logical excuse as to why he should. Dean is a dangerous creature now; the farther he stays away from Castiel, the better off Cas will be in his weakened state.

And then the door opens, and the two angels watch on as the family swarms around the baby in confusion, and Castiel wonders why the hell he has to love Dean so goddamn much that he can't even hurt him despite knowing the destruction Dean will bring about. He catches the tears on the back of his hands. Dean watches him past the bodies of people as he cries, his green eyes blank and cold and unblinking.

There is nothing else.

* * *

**AN: **I'm sorry if any of you received a notification for Ch. 2 before this. I posted this yesterday but then took it down like immediately afterward because I wanted to look it over again. Anyway, I hope this wasn't too confusing, since there was a lot of explaining that had to be done.

And -

Titanqueen13, baby, you should totally HMU.


End file.
